Add your photos in the squares. Don't worry if your photos overlap. Once you have adjusted the layers of the photos as you would like, you can go back and erase anything that overlaps. For this, I changed the template to white since the photos were so dark.

 

You will notice above that the main photo is on the bottom layer, the next layer is the cake photo. This has now covered up any of the main photo that was flowing over into the smaller slot. Next, I will add the middle photo. This will be on the layer above the cake photo, to hide anything that's in its spot.

 

Now notice in the Layers Palette, the middle photo is on the layer above the cake photo. But to have the photo placed like I would like it, it's overlapping the main photo. To fix this, select your Eraser Tool, make sure that the layer you are wanting to erase is active (if it's the active layer nothing else can be erased) and erase the overlapping portion.

 

Place your last photo, once again erasing anything that overlaps.

 

Now when you take away your template, this is what your photos look like. But that's okay, because you are going to be covering your template with paper.

 

Select your background paper and drag it to your document. Only this time make sure it's on the top layer, above your template.

 

With the paper layer active, hold down the Ctrl key and press the G key. This will "clip" your template to the paper. To merge the paper and the template, click the arrow next to the word "More" in the Layers Palette and choose "Merge Down."

 

This will merge the two layers. To add another color, you follow the above steps again. This time, I added the blue paper on the top layer. Using the Rectangular Marquee Tool, I selected the part of the paper I wanted to keep.

 

Now if I was to hit Delete now, it would erase the portion of paper highlighted, which I want to keep. So I need to go to the top Tool Bar, choose Select> Inverse.

 

This highlights the part of the paper I want to get rid of.

 

Hit Delete, then to get rid of the marching ants, press Ctrl+D.

 

Once again, use Ctrl+G to clip the template to the paper.

 

This time, before you merge the blue paper with the template, you will want to add your drop shadow. Because once you merge the two, you will not be able to. After that is done, click the arrow next to "More" in the Layers Palette, "Merge Down" and now you have two different papers on your template.

 

Finish off your layout by adding your embellishments.

Tutorial uses:

Tutorial written by Angie Briggs